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2/ Canada is enormous, the 2nd largest country in the world behind Russia . Twice the size of the EU

Here's a great Dymaxion projection of the world with countries ranked by size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area

3/ Canada is subdivided into 10 provinces and 3 territories. They are administered slightly differently, territories control less of their own affairs. Nunavut is the newest (and largest) territory and was established in 1999

https://answersblurb.com/why-does-canada-have-provinces-and-territories

4/ Newfoundland (then known as the Dominion of Newfoundland, now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador) was originally it's own entity within the British Empire and only joined Canada in 1949.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_Newfoundland

5/ As we noted in last week's France thread, just off the coast of Newfoundland are the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (ISO code "PM"), last tiny remnants of "New France"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France

The French influence of course lives on in Canada's largest province Quebec

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec

6/ Canada has more than 800,000 lakes.

Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron is the world's largest lake island.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoulin_Island

"Inception Island" it is an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=69.792222&mlon=-108.240556&zoom=15#map=15/69.7922/-108.2406

7/ The US / Canada border is one of the longest and most peaceful borders in the world at 8,890 km, but several areas (mainly bodies of water) are still disputed between the two countries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Canada_and_the_United_States

8/ Setting the western border was quite contentious, but in 1846 the US and the UK (Canada was then a British colony) agreed on the 49th parallel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_boundary_dispute

This created the unique exclave of Point Roberts, Washington, US which can only be reached by land via Canada.

9/ There was very exciting geographic news last year when Canada and Denmark resolved their dispute over remote, uninhabited Hans Island, thus ending the delightful "Whisky War", in which each country left bottles of alcohol for the other

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War

The result is Canada now shares a land border with Denmark / Greenland

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-and-denmark-reach-settlement-over-disputed-arctic-island/

10/ one side-note - this means both Canada and Denmark are no longer valid answers for our April 2021 #fridaygeotrivia question of "name countries that border only one other country"

https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/geotrivia-april2021-countries-that-border-only-one-country

11/ A more serious open dispute is the status of the Northwest Passage, the sea route between Atlantic and Pacific.

Canada claims it to be internal waters, while most other countries say it is an international strait.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage#International_waters_dispute

12/ We hope you enjoyed our look at the geographic oddities of Canada . Thanks for reading (and sharing).

We have many more threads about specific countries, border disputes, geocoding, etc listed on our blog. Most still on twitter, but over time we are moving them here to mastodon. Enjoy.

https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads

We'll feature more countries in coming weeks and months
#geoweirdness

@secretasianman yes, you right, though it’s a bit complicated as all Greenlandic citizens are EU citizens

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_and_the_European_Union